Check out the local university - there is good money in being in drug studies.
Robert Rodriguez paid for the development of El Mariachi by selling plasma and doing studies.
There are also often lots of opportunities to do little psych studies for $100+ per, especially if you are a minority (it is harder to find minority participants).
Finally, if you fit the right profile, you can make money giving sperm at the local bank as well. $105 per week back in the 80s if you were a top tier school undergraduate.
Club soccer pays $100 per match ($50 per side) for about a 2 hour committment (50 - 70 minute match, plus check in). You can get trained by the local AYSO league. Pull a tournament and you make a few hundred in morning - AND lose weight!
But even casual work requires you to be reliable, if you want to get called back a second time. My parents are old enough that they hire people to rake the leaves, mow the lawn and plow the driveway. If the guy they call flakes out on them and doesn’t rake the leaves, they hire someone else.
I once answered a postcard ad in a post office window which said 'Make jewelery at home" I was given some sacks of beads and string to make up the necklaces. Low paid homeworker type stuff, but I ended up working full time for the owner packaging the products, making up displays and traveling the country to trade shows.
Yard work is a good one as mentioned. I’ve laid patios, varnished floors, plastered in light fittings etc etc - there are lots of odd jobs that people can’t get done. Once you’ve glued together one little old lady’s mirror she’s telling all her friends.
There are a number of on-line tutoring companies out there. I work 20-25 hours a week with one as a second job. The pay isn’t great ($7/hr while waiting, $10 when with a student), but you can be doing all kinds of other stuff at the same time – especially if you’ve got a laptop/aren’t tied to a single location.
If you play piano/organkeyboards, churches often need people to play for services and choir rehearsals. They also need people who can fill in when the regular music folks are sick. Another option at churches is Sunday morning childcare. Not a lot of hours or high pay, but unlikely to conflict with a Mon.-Fri. job.
TheScogg, it wasn’t guru.com, it was a site specific to graphics design, mostly logo design. I can’t remember the name, this was a while ago and I cannot find it in my bookmarks (I had my laptop stolen 6 months ago).
Did the make jewelry at home thing too. I sucked at it, but it looked good as a business, and I met a couple ladies doing well with it. Don’t be scared by the fact that you have to send them money first. Although you should never pay for a job, this is a necessary precaution on their side to avoid throwing materials to the wind.
My cousin is a full time dog walker and makes great money. She’s a tiny little woman and does this year round in Chicago. I hope you’re in a better climate so it’s actually fun for you.
I don’t remember having to send any money - but it was a local thing - she brought the stuff to my house. A friend of mine has a good business where she sells hand made sweaters - she gets them made by homeworkers and does the marketing and distribution.
It’s a real job, but you could deliver newspapers if your other work allows it time-wise. I make a decent amount of money at it–much better than minimum wage, and it’s reliable.
FWIW, I have three part-time jobs. (I had 4 until recently.) It’s kind of nice to know that if I lose one, I have the others to rely on.
Selling plasma, not blood (which was volunteer-only), in college was often my beer money. But after a while, you look like a junkie.
This has come up before, and if there’s a university in your area, reading for blind university students is a good, flexible part-time job. I did that in Texas for the campus office of the State Commission for the Blind. Students need textbooks read into recorders or in person. Sometimes it’s doing stuff like proctoring a test or helping with research. It can be really interesting sometimes, and one blind client who was a regular kept his own beer keg in his apartment, inside a refrigerated cabinet, and we quaffed quite a few together.
There always seem to be a market for odd things with the face of the Virgin Mary on it. Take a close look at that next ham sandwich before you chomp on it.
Many I saw are “large” internet outfits whose first business is selling the supplies. They sell you a sample kit, you put together the pieces and send it back. If they like your work, you can then buy from them a “craftman kit” or however they call it. When you finish those, you mail it to them and they mail you your check and a new kit. After finishing some number of kits (around 3) they also mail you a check for the cost of the sample kit.
You have to send money at first, but it makes sense if you think of it on their terms. Most of those sample kits end up in drawers or under sofas. If you end up working with them, they will pay for it, but if you don’t, they don’t take a loss for satisfying the curiosity of yet another idler.
In the case of jewelry, besides the material you only need a set of pliers (or not even that, for bead work). Some others (for Christmas ornaments or whathaveyou) will also require that you have a glue gun (you pay for the glue) and scissors, measuring tape or whatever other tools you might need, but nothing major.
Local outfits might work it differently. My wife used to buy supplies for jewelry from a local store that would also buy your finished pieces. Since she had done the course with them, they would give her the stones on credit which she didn’t have to pay if she sold them the pieces.
I don’t understand the part about it being a relative either, but in a case like this one might well be approved for unemployment benefits. What with the rubber paychecks the OP can make a strong case that the employer was the “moving party” in terminating the relationship.
There are lots of things you can do to make extra money. However, keep in mind that, right now, there are lots of people trying to do the same thing. Some suggestions:
Mystery shopping. Don’t pay an upfront fee except to perform the shop itself (e.g. buying something to prove you were there, which they reimburse). This is getting more difficult due to economic times. PM me if you need help and I can get you started with some reliable companies. Note, you don’t make a ton of money doing this, but frequently can get free stuff that you’d pay for otherwise, like some groceries or stuff at the mall. You can also dine out for free a lot (generally at chains) but you don’t usually get paid much or anything on top of the reimbursement for that.
Check the ‘gigs’ section of Craigslist for work you could do. Or, post something - yard work, home repairs, computer assistance, tutoring, whatever. Anything that says ‘work online’ is 99% likely to be a scam, or shady (like spamming forums and blog comments).
Reselling items on eBay. Garage sales are good, but if you know something about an area (for me, it was video games and some books), you can even try thrift stores or watching the Craigslist ads, but this tends to be a lot less lucrative as it’s generally been seen by a lot more people.
Like to write or have an interest? Develop a website or blog and sell adspace via Google Adwords. Then promote it. This takes some upfront time but is one of the few projects that you can do entirely around your own personal schedule.
A part time job. Now is a good time to get a short term seasonal gig. You’ll have to commit in the short term, though.
ChaCha lets you facilitate websearches for people on mobile phones. I left because I thought it didn’t pay enough to bother based on how much I could commit to doing regularly, but there are bonuses if you can churn out a certain amount each week. They pay very reliably. This goes nicely with other online or partially online jobs like mystery shopping, as you can be searching for work or filling out forms between queries.
I do online surveys, mostly because I can do them at at work (my boss doesn’t mind). However, keep in mind that they pay very very little for the time involved. I make about $250 a year doing it but if I put a dollar per hour rate on it it’d be very low - it’s just something I do instead of just screwing around websurfing, so it’s worth it to me.
If you’re serious about doing the online thing, here’s the key - never pay money up front. You’ll miss out on the odd weird job that’s legit, but you’ll also miss out on all of the scams, too. There are lots of forums that facilitate working at home through a variety of different methods, including call center work at home, online writing, dropshipping, and all kinds of crap. The forums are generally good because you can get a good impression of the company up front before wasting a lot of time. I don’t recall the sites but try searching for work-at-home mom type forums. Keep in mind, however, you’re competing with a large pool of people - including people internationally - who may be willing to work at slave wages ($3/hour), so, you’ll need to lock in on stuff that doesn’t just require a warm body. Jobs that require skill, intelligence, a local presence, a car, etc. all tend to pay more, because you’re not competing with some dude in the Philippines that way.
My wife and I deliver a free publication that’s published bi-weekly.
We gross $525 for the monthly 22-24 hours per month the two of us work on “book week” plus the 4-6 hours per month I spend restocking our high volume locations on “off weeks”. Our net is enhanced by our being independent contractors and thus able to deduct mileage from our taxable income.
We get the books on Wed. afternoon and have to be done by 5PM Friday, so we can set our 11-12 working hours quite flexibly.
IMHO, any city delivery job is useful in your search for full-time work in that you see hundreds of workplaces from an angle that no other job seeker can see them from.
I worked as a courier while I was looking for work as a stationary engineer and was able to sneak peeks at boiler and mechanical rooms all over town. I knew right away which potential employers were shit pits and could save time by not applying there.